AEO/GEO (Answer Engine / Generative Engine Optimisation) structures content to be retrieved and cited by AI answer engines. The documented levers are static rendering, answer-first content structure and schema markup, not speculative tactics like an llms.txt file, which Google has stated it doesn't support.
What's included?
- Content audit for answer-block structure, self-contained sections and hedging language
- Schema markup coverage (FAQPage, Article, DefinedTerm, Organisation)
- Static-rendering verification so content is visible without JavaScript execution
- AI-referrer tracking (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) tagged server-side in analytics
The AI SEO services we offer
Not sure where you stand? Start with a free AI visibility audit or browse the AI Search Hub.
Why this is now a board-level question
Search is being answered before it is clicked. Pew Research found that when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% without one, and clicked a link inside the summary in just 1% (Pew Research Center, July 2025). Alphabet said in 2026 that AI Overviews reach around 2.5 billion monthly users (Alphabet via The Motley Fool, Aug 2026), and ChatGPT reported 900 million weekly active users in February 2026 (TechCrunch, Feb 2026). If your brand is not in the answer, a growing share of buyers never reaches your site.
What the research actually says
The most cited study, presented at KDD 2024 by researchers from Princeton and IIT Delhi, tested nine ways of rewriting content and found that adding statistics, quotations and citations could lift visibility in generative engine answers by up to 40%, while keyword stuffing did not help (Aggarwal et al., GEO, KDD 2024). That matches what we see: engines cite passages that state a clear fact, attribute it and can stand alone.
What we do
- Make pages readable by machines: static or server-rendered HTML, clean structure and valid schema markup (Google: structured data intro)
- Rewrite for answers: question-shaped headings, a direct answer in the first sentence, then the detail
- Add evidence: statistics, named sources and quotes from your own experts
- Build entity consistency: the same facts about your business on your site, profiles and trusted third-party pages
- Track citations: we monitor how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews describe you for your priority questions
Be sceptical of shortcuts. An llms.txt file or an "AI SEO plugin" will not do much on its own. The fundamentals are the same ones that make pages good for people: clear answers, evidence and a fast, crawlable site.
Who this is for
Businesses whose buyers research complex decisions: B2B software, professional services, healthcare, education and high-value ecommerce. It works best alongside traditional SEO, because AI answers still draw heavily on pages that rank. Read more in our guide to answer-first content for AI search and our GEO glossary entry.